GrafoDexia

This site is devoted to copyright and issues of 'intellectual property,' particularly the issue's analytical aspects. It also concerns itself with the gap between public perception and the true facts, and with the significant lag time between the coverage on more technical sites and the mainstream press.
For site feed, see: http://grafodexia.blogspot.com/atom.xml
To see the list of sites monitored to create this site, see: http://rpc.bloglines.com/blogroll?html=1&id=CopyrightJournal

Wednesday, January 26, 2005

Is There a Pattern to the Music Industry's File-Sharing Lawsuits?'The Recording Industry Association of America has subpoenaed 85 colleges seeking the names of suspected song swappers in lawsuits filed over the past year. College administrators wonder whether the choice of campuses reflects careful strategizing or is just a crapshoot.' (The Chronicle of Higher Education)

MGM v. Grokster opening arguments. '"A ruling from the court could help us move to a world when file-sharing goes legitimate," says Mitch Bainwol, CEO of the Recording Industry Association of America.'

Response to Joycotting comments

While it may seem disingenuous to argue in one breath the network effects make P2P considerably less damaging to the RIAA et. al's profits and in the other to propose the joycott as an ethical solution, the key is that each are different consumers. However, as you point out, the term itself doesn't accurately reflect the intended use. I see the joycott as most useful for non-mainstream content: if you wanted to sample the RIAA's goods without paying for them, joycotting is not necessary, you can simply turn on the radio. In a society that the media seems obsessed about tagging as 'increasingly polarized,' apparently because a 51% margin of victory versus a 49% margin of victory means that the country has shifted dramatically in just four years, there is definitely a real problem of polarizing news media. It happens in the mainstream--I believe it was Penn's Annenberg school that showed that FOX News was ~70% pro-Bush and CNN is ~70% pro-Kerry--but to a greater degree at the fringe. My ultra-liberal friends read a non-intersecting set of specialty newsmedia than my fundamentalist friends. I'm always fascinated to read both, but unwilling to support either agenda by subscribing to them. Which brings up another point. Joycotting is not just about financial boycotts, but about statistical ones as well. Given the common misinterpretation of statistics, it makes sense to try to exclude oneself from a subscriber statistic for an agenda one does not support. Many times the evidence for a fringe group's support comes in the form of the depth of interest in its publication, for, after all, who would want to read anything by them unless you believed it?
--Ari

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I don't entirely agree with this argument. I think the owner of a work benefits indirectly when you use or distribute their work. After all, it's free viral marketing. Some works have a network-effect value (value = O(n) for n people that use it) -- if a song is being used in a movie, then it helps the owner of the copyright on the song bargain if the song is known by many people (as the maker of the movie can use the same song to communicate to more people).
I think it is irresponsible to distribute the work of, for instance, the RIAA, as you are essentially lending the work free marketing. I prefer to find freer music that I can distribute and enjoy.
I understand that information is key, but the term "joycotting", as well as the examples you pose, suggests the information being illegally copied is being used for entertainment, not for the vitality of democracy. The entertainment industry hasn't even said "thanks" for all the marketing we get them. In fact, they'll try to sue me for helping them make a buck. As a result, I don't want to help people get their information.
Ethan Glasser-Camp

Tuesday, January 18, 2005

Boycott 2.0 – The Joycott

With the rise of the Bin Laden book, it is time to take a look at a new type of boycott. In this age of information, knowing what your enemy—political or martial—is thinking is critical, and for a democracy to function, all citizens should be informed. Yet in this age of escalating copyright law, gaining access to the mass works of such an enemy means you must support that very work's dissemination. Fortunately, there is another way. By using P2P networks to 'pirate' the work, you can boycott it and yet still discuss it intelligently, countering the usual “don't knock it 'till you've seen it” argument effectively, without having to support a work one finds morally repugnant. I call it “Joycotting,” because you can boycott the work but still enjoy its perusal. Jihad, Jihad for a Jew, Farenheit 9/11 for a Bush supporter, Disney films for a Southern Baptist, Passion of the Christ for moderates, Requiem for a Dream for a conservative, the Bin Laden book for any American, all prove worthy candidates for such a boycott. Some other suggestions follow:

Boycott works of poor quality, e.g. The Mission Impossible DVD, where they simply didn't take the time or energy to look at the DVD before stamping out millions of copies and pawning them off on unsuspecting customers.

Boycott works which should be out of copyright, but aren't because of Congress' actions. This one is particularly salient because it only requires a few copies to break even since the production costs are sunk costs, making each copy purchased a stronger incentive for them to push for copyright extensions in the future. Many older DVD's also fall under the boycott poor quality works argument, as pictures like Metropolis could be easily fixed, but aren't, and they are still more expensive than modern movies, despite the poor quality transfers and zero filming costs.

Some will argue that joycotting provides an easy way out for those who wish to justify their piracy, but this argument fails under the sheer weight of 60+ million Americans downloading off P2P networks. People, it seems, don't need any justification to enjoy works which in many cases should be in the public domain or freely shareable, nor to they need a justification to support the production of new works . Joycotting thus provides the basis for a moral framework for what to download, which should decrease the numbers of works being shared over P2P networks. Respecting the Founders' Copyright is one example of such a system, with the joycotter providing funding for recent works (economically, providing justification for the content producer's assumption that investment in future projects will be rewarded, by supporting profits for their past investment, and providing the capital to produce such future projects). Another option would be refusing to support the output of poor-quality works from Hollywood, instead buying only those movies which provide substantial value. Whichever framework is chosen, it will at least be consistent, an improvement from the status quo.

Sunday, January 16, 2005

Major hack causes redirected e-mail. Other articles have shown how the backbone of piracy is not the P2P networks but the underground rings. This just illustrates yet again how easy it is for truly-knowledgable individuals to coopt other networks to their ends.

Tuesday, January 11, 2005

The wisdom of crowds. Peer-to-peer decision making. Oh, and Gladwell's wrong. Again. When he spoke at Penn two years ago, he seemed to think that steroids are only illegal because people don't like letting people work harder, and that's just what they did. Grr.

Monday, January 10, 2005

U.S. urges China to "put people in jail" over IP infringement. An interesting tidbit from my pharma class today: patents provide the right not only to prevent U.S. companies from producing infringing items, but also to prevent the importation of such items from countries where it is otherwise legal. It's often said by industry and government that our content industries are in peril because of foreign, particularly Chinese, disregard for IP, but it's also true that preventing the reimporation of alternatives allowed in foreign countries harms all U.S. industry.